A raw data set of 5674 facebook posts with 24 variables of 12 unique stations was exported from Hootsuite. The data ranges from 2017-11-18 through 2018-09-19. Posts before 18 November 2017 are not available on the Hootsuite platform.

After cleaning and tidying the data; we filter out link posts that contain “vicpol” in the post url and filter out posts in. If the first month and last month aren’t a full months worth of data we remove them for a more apples to apples comparison. The following graphs were produced from the remaining 5674 posts (0 posts less than the original set).

Posts by time

Across the stations for the remaining 9 months, on average there are: 569.8889 posts per month, 29.885 reactions per post, 19.0349 shares per post, 12.575 comments per post, and engagements per post. We define engagement to be the sum of reactions, shares, and comments.

Engagement by month across post type

The bulk of engagements are with photo posts.

Mean engagements trends by time across post type

Do we see engagement across post type changing over time?

Engagement by post type across post age

Of the bottom 95% of posts by engagement.

High engagment posts: engagement by post type across post age

Taking a closer look at high engagement posts. Looking at the same graph for only the top 10% of engaged posts.

Appendix

All times are listed in GMT.

The data is mostly present. story is NA if there is no message with a post.

                                   Station          Date           
 Greater Dandenong Police Service Area : 725   Min.   :2017-12-01  
 Cardinia Police Service Area          : 642   1st Qu.:2018-02-05  
 Greater Shepparton Police Service Area: 611   Median :2018-04-13  
 Geelong Police Service Area           : 494   Mean   :2018-04-15  
 Ballarat Police Service Area          : 400   3rd Qu.:2018-06-25  
 Wyndham Police Service Area           : 397   Max.   :2018-08-31  
 (Other)                               :1860                       
 Weekday    PostDaysOld    PostType    ReactionCount     CommentCount 
 Mon:840   Min.   : 19   Event :  22   Min.   :   0.0   Min.   :   0  
 Tue:897   1st Qu.: 86   Video :1146   1st Qu.:   6.0   1st Qu.:   0  
 Wed:948   Median :159   Link  : 846   Median :  12.0   Median :   2  
 Thu:957   Mean   :157   Status: 198   Mean   :  29.9   Mean   :  13  
 Fri:837   3rd Qu.:226   Photo :2917   3rd Qu.:  29.0   3rd Qu.:   8  
 Sat:258   Max.   :292                 Max.   :1986.0   Max.   :3621  
 Sun:392                                                              
   ShareCount   EngagementCount
 Min.   :   0   Min.   :   0   
 1st Qu.:   1   1st Qu.:  10   
 Median :   4   Median :  25   
 Mean   :  19   Mean   :  61   
 3rd Qu.:  15   3rd Qu.:  59   
 Max.   :3508   Max.   :8548